TO END DENIAL OF RAPE AND THE CULTURE OF RAPE IN 12 POINTS
Dr Muriel Salmona, psychiatrist and psychotraumatologist,, President of the association Traumatic Memory and Victimology,January 2016, updated in 2020
Article in French :
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Translated from French by Loretta Lee
and Jean-Pierre Salmona
For still too many people, whether professionals likely to take care of victims or not, there is a real refusal to think about sexual violence or to recognize the consequences, but also to hear them when they are revealed. Silence is imposed on victims, making them feel guilty, and society is easily rid of the problem: there is no longer a need to question the favorable opinion they could have of the people designated as aggressors, nor the world in which they safely live in. Due to the refusal to accept that such violence could take place in spaces that these people want to continue to consider protected and reliable, the feeling of horror facing crimes and misdemeanors that render them unthinkable or inconceivable, the fear of consequences from denouncing violence, all will be in place to deny violence through anguish, cowardice or collusion. Thus, the large majority of victims find themselves abandoned to their fate and suffering, without protection or comforting, and often mistreatment.
In fact, we are in a society in which denying rape—“and if it wasn’t rape?”—and questioning the victim—“and if the victim isn’t one?”—are still widespread. Too many people join in and spread false ideas that seriously damage victims and guarantee impunity to aggressors.
This system organizing denial and questioning victims is called “the culture of rape.” This rape culture colonizes people's minds and dictates that there are "good" and "bad" victims, with "good" or "bad" behavior, and that there is "real" or "false" rape. By generating a cruel lack of solidarity and empathy towards the victims, this questioning of the victims seriously harms them and sends them back to silence and solitude.
The results of the survey "The French and representations on rape and sexual violence" conducted by IPSOS in 2016 and in 2019, at the request of our association Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie, shocked the media and public opinion, revealing how misconceptions about rape, gender stereotypes and rape culture die hard and are widespread. In 2016 it seemed incredible that in France:
- 40% think that a provocative attitude of the victim in public reduces the responsibility of the rapist, and that if she really defends herself, she can scare him away;
- 30% think that a sexy outfit partly excuses the rapist;
- more than 2/3 adhere to the myth of instinctual male sexuality, difficult to control, and passive female sexuality;
- and more than 20% consider that women like to be forced and do not know what they want, etc.
And what about the results of our second survey of 2019, two years after the global movement #MeToo? The movement freed women victims to speak about sexual violence and has attacked denial and the law of silence, and was the origin of a great outpouring of solidarity, recognition and support for the victims, and an awareness of the extent and gravity of this sexual violence. While the overwhelming majority of French people - 81% - believe that #MeToo has a positive effect, they adhere even more than in 2016 to sexist stereotypes and false representations about rape, particularly those which implicate the victim and consider that a “provocative” attitude in public, a sexy attitude or outfit, having already flirted or going to a stranger's house alone reduces the aggressor's responsibility. Despite a good knowledge of the difficulties for victims to lodge a complaint and psychotraumatic mechanisms such as astonishment, dissociation, hold and traumatic amnesia, they are even more likely than in 2016 - 37% (vs 32%) to think that victims often wrongly accuse, 27% (vs 25% ) that they would not be raped if they respected certain precautionary rules, 30% (vs 27%) that it is not rape if the victim does not defend herself, and 43% (vs 41%) that, if they really defended themselves, they would make the rapist flee. They fall short about the judicial management of rapes, being 90% to think that the number of convictions has increased for 10 years while it has decreased by 40%.
The culture of rape is defined as adhering to a society composed of numerous rape myths. These rape myths are analyzed very thoroughly in the feminist blog of Antisexism. Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1994) defined the myths about rape as “attitudes and beliefs generally false, widespread and persistent, permitting denial and justifying masculine sexual aggression against women” but it’s applicable for all victims: women and men, adults and children. These attitudes and beliefs can be grouped into three large categories: 1) “Nothing happened”: a certain number of myths promote the idea that the women often wrongly accuse men of rape. 2) “She in fact was consenting: she wanted or liked it that way”: the idea that something happened but it wasn’t sexual violence, that it was consensual sex. These are particularly perverse myths that claim that a woman who says no thinks yes; that violence is sexually exciting for women; that the victim could have and would have known how to resist if she was not consenting. 3) “She deserved it, and she is responsible for what happened”: these are the myths such as “she was dressed too sexy” or “she was walking alone at night” and that she provoked the violence that happened to her, that she could have avoided it if she had protected herself.
In a world where the overwhelming majority of sexual violence victims—83% in our survey (IVSEA survey, 2015)—were not protected or recognized, the few victims that revealed what they had suffered take the risk of being questioned and mistreated. In a perverse reversal, the projector is flashed on the victims rather than being on the aggressors. We witness reasoning organized in a general denial of sexual violence.
There is consensus on assertions such as “yes, rape and sexual assault exist just as incest and pedophilia; yes, it’s serious for the victims; yes, those guilty of rape, incest and pedophilia should be firmly sentenced.” While almost no one questions such assertions, these assertions are not valid for certain sexual violence, that which affect close persons or known victims or aggressors.
In this system of denial, sexual crimes and misdemeanors exist but “not in our world, not in our entourage, not in our homes, not in our family, not as a couple, not in our professional universe, not in our institutions, not in the homes of people we are familiar with and even less in the homes of those we admire…” Sexual violence exists but only in a social sphere of people “not civilized, without education, mental patients, or enemies.” When in fact sexual crimes and misdemeanors are uniformly distributed in all social-cultural environments without exception, and are in fact often committed by close ones, in 90% of cases for adult victims (ONDRP 2014), in 90 % of cases for minor victims (survey IVSEA, 2015).
I – Ending the myth of “real rape”
The myth of “real rape” that takes place in a dark alley or a parking lot under threat of a weapon or physical violence, by a stranger on an attractive young woman, is particularly tenacious. Yet as all the studies of victimization show (surveys that consist of asking a sample of people representative of the population to be studied), it is not in the street or going to a party that a woman is in the most danger of being raped, it is when she is a child, in her home, with her family, at school, during her extracurricular activities, in health institutions, or when she is an adult in a relationship with a partner, an acquaintance, or at work. The aggressor is almost always known to the victim and this is in fact the aggressor’s strategy of constraint. Many rapes are without physical violence other than the rape itself on people who are not able to oppose or to defend themselves. (ENVEFF, 2000; INSEE-ONDRP, 2010 - 2015).
With this myth of “real rape” the large majority of rapes without physical violence or threat are buried. Only half of rapes are committed with violence and only 12% with the threat of a weapon. (CFCV, 2003). As we have seen, rapes committed by those close are by far the most frequent, in 80% of cases for adults and 94% of cases for children. Members of the family commit more than 50% of sexual violence against children, and partners are responsible for close to 50% of sexual violence committed against adults (IVSEA survey, 2015 ; VIRAGE, 2017). Rapes happen most often in the home of the victim, at work (65%), in school or in an institution and 50% happen during the day (Zucker, 2005, CFCV, 2003).
In the same way, rapes committed against children are not identified as “real rapes” in situations where they are the most frequent (59% of rapes and rape attempts committed against women before 18 years of age, 67% for men, CSF, 2008); on people considered not attractive enough, handicapped people (who suffer four times more rapes), men, and those committed by other penetration than vaginal, i.e. oral or anal and not only with a penis but with finger or objects.
No one should be able to ignore the law which has defined rape in France since 1980 through article 222-23 of the criminal code such as: “Any act of penetration of any nature committed on someone by another through violence, constraint, threat or surprise” which includes forcing a person by violence, threat or surprise to submit to rape on the part of a third party.
This does not prevent public personalities from promoting rape culture, as the journalist Ivan Levaï declared on the air in 2011 regarding DSK: “A rape is with a knife or a pistol,” or an intellectual such as Catherine Millet saying, “As long as the man is not armed with a weapon, a knife or a revolver, a woman can always defend herself.”
II - Ending “nothing happened”
The large majority of sexual violence is ignored, and victims are subjected to a law of silence that makes them invisible or seen as liars, crazy or seductresses able from their provocative behavior to pervert good people in all other respects. In any case, in this system, everything will be the victim’s fault.
To maintain this denial, victims must be made to disappear, which has the advantage of making violence and aggressors disappear and to restore an idealized world: “Move along, there’s nothing to see”— as if all was invented, or, if the reality of sexual acts can be denied, then they were not violent. It is sufficient to make up and transform what happened into sexuality, love, care, games, etc. This explains the proliferation of theories claiming how much women and children can lie or presenting pathologies that can push them to say anything: false allegations, parental alienation syndrome, mental problems such as hysteria, psychoses, dementia, personality disorders, etc. As we will see, this often results in a situation particularly perverse and cruel: the symptoms and behavior resulting from psychotraumatic consequences, which are normally medical evidence of what victims have suffered, are instead held against the victims to discredit them. Everything is completely backward.
Yet in this “ideal” world, the figures for sexual violence are staggering. According to victimization surveys: in the world, according to the WHO, one in ten women have suffered sexual violence since the age of 15 (FRA, 2014; WHO 2017), one in five girls and one in thirteen boys have suffered sexual violence in their childhood (0-18 years), each year 1 million girls are assaulted and raped worldwide (WHO, 2014). In 2019, 45 million pedophile sexual images and videos were posted online (NYT, 2019).
In France, 14.5% (VIRAGE, 2017) to 20% (CSF, 2008) of women have suffered sexual violence (sexual assault + rape) during their lifetime, and 4% (VIRAGE, 2017) of men. And with regard to rape, 16% of women have suffered attempted rape or rape in their life, including 59% before the age of 18, and 5% of men including before the age of 18 (Context of sexuality survey in France CSF INSERM , 2008). In this study, sexual violence affected all social categories equally, with figures slightly higher in superior classes.
Above all this sexual violence is sexist and discriminatory violence of which women and girls are the main victims in a continuum of violence from an early age (80%), and of which men are the main perpetrators (90%) (ONDRP) -INSEE, 2017).
This sexual violence is of considerable magnitude and affects all ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic groups, in all places and in all contexts. They are committed mainly by people known to the victim (in 90% of cases, and in 50% by family members or spouses), and on the most vulnerable people: children, disabled, vulnerable, marginalized and traumatized, having already been victims (ONDRP-INSEE, 2017, VIRAGE 2017, IVSEA, 2015, MTV / IPSOS, 2019).
Each year, 260,000 rapes and attempted rapes are said to be committed in France, a figure from victimization surveys which makes you dizzy but which nevertheless remains underestimated. The Living and Security Framework survey of the National Observatory on Delinquency and Criminal Responses measured that in 2017, 94,000 women aged 18 to 75 declared having been victims of rape and attempted rape during the previous year, and 16,000 men, and it is estimated that nearly 130,000 girls and 35,000 boys are victims of rape or attempted rape each year (ONDRP-INSEE 2012-2017; CSF, 2008).
The main victims are therefore girls and women, the aggressors being generally men known to the victims, members of their family (incestuous rapes and incestuous sexual assaults) in almost half of the cases for minors, partners or ex-partner (marital rape) in more than a third of cases for adults. This sexual violence takes place within the framework of a balance of power and domination, with vulnerable and discriminated people becoming victims more frequently (MTV / IPSOS, 2019).
Children are the main victims: 81% of sexual violence began before 18 years old, 51% before 11 years old, 21% before 6 years old, and more than 60% of rapes are committed against minors, the average age of victim minors being 10 years old (VIRAGE, 2017; MTV / IPSOS, 2019; IVSEA, 2015, CSF, 2008). People with disabilities are 4 times more victims (and even up to 5 times more for minors with intellectual disabilities), and nearly 90% of women with autism spectrum disorders have suffered sexual violence, 78% all genders included(Brown-Lavoie, 2014; Danmeyer, 2018; Gourion, 2019); the same goes for sick, racialized, migrant, precarious, marginalized, homeless, prostitutes, etc. who suffer proportionately much more sexual violence.
Yet these figures are underestimated. There are the DROM COM overseas territories, where sexual violence could be even more frequent (the next study VIRAGE which takes up the ENVEFF study will take this into account) and all the people who are not questioned in the study: people older than 75, marginalized or in precarious situations, the homeless, the undocumented, people in institutions or in shelters.
In fact, in the framework of the complaints filed for rape:
-Impunity is scandalously the rule and has worsened over the past 10 years. Of the very low number of complaints (around 10% for adults and 4% for minors), 74% of them are dismissed, more than 15% are corrected and only 10% are judged in assize court, and rape convictions have fallen by 40% over the past 10 years with a downward trend (Justice Infostat from the Ministry of Justice n°160 and 164, February and September 2018),
– the rare sexual crimes that lead to sentencing in criminal trials (between 1.5% to 2% of all the rapes suffered, in 2014, 765 men and 6 women were condemned for raping people more than 15 years old, ONDRP) are predominantly those committed by people from underprivileged social classes, as shown in a sociology study conducted in 2011 by Véronique Le Gaouziou. For the others, the word of the victims, their behavior, their mental capacities will be questioned resulting in “The victim is guilty” or to paraphrase the totalitarian slogan of the Orwell novel 1984: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”
III – Ending victim guilt
In this system where rape culture reigns, if the victim didn’t attempt self-defense, didn’t cry out because she was paralyzed, it is interpreted as consenting. If the victim cannot remember the exact date, hour, and configuration of the premises (which is common during traumas), then she is thought to be lying. If the victim did not speak out as soon as she was threatened, out of shame or fear of being rejected or not believed, to protect her family or because she was too disoriented or incapable of realizing what happened, then she is considered making it up. If the affected victim continued to see or live with the assailant, it is viewed as proof that she wanted such acts and that she liked it. If the victim is a child, or someone disabled or mentally ill, their word has no value. If the victim is a prostitute or someone “from a bad life,” it is thought that she could not have been raped, that she was necessarily consenting. If the victim was seductive, “too skimpily dressed” or with “too low of a neckline” then “she was asking for it.” If the victim is elderly or if she is considered too ugly or too fat, perception is that she couldn’t have been raped, as “no one could have wanted her.”
The victim of rape is always considered guilty. Through stupidity, viciousness, or venality, to become interesting, or because she fails to take responsibility for sexual relations? Are the rare rape victims who are able to file a rape charge largely liars and those who accuse the innocent? So, where are all the rapists, responsible for staggering figures on rape each year: 94,000 adult women and 130,000 minors, 16,000 adult men and 35,000 minors (INSEE-ONDRP, 2012 - 2017 et CSF, 2008)? Is no one worried? How is that no one has any fear for all the new victims to come, who statistically could be people of their entourage?
Even if the rape or attack is acknowledged, and the victim is not considered a liar, she is considered at fault: having exposed herself, provoked it, been “looking” for it, the person that scandal comes from, or destroys everything, or cannot get back up, turn the page, forgive, or get better…
Whether she is recognized as a rape victim or not, detractors claim she is morally at fault no matter what. This is used as justification for a cruel absence of solidarity towards her, and all the mistreatment and abandon that she suffers, so that she feels worthless… All of this system is effective for imposing silence on victims who have no solution except self-censorship in order to not be excluded.
In this way the rights of sexual violence victims are violated and they are subjected to a chain reaction of injustices, the injustice of being a victim of crimes and misdemeanors, non-recognition, an entourage that doesn’t want to see, know or hear, nor denounce what she was subjected to in the intimacy of a family, a couple, a relationship or in the confined space of work, an institution, the desperate injustice of seeing aggressors benefit most often from blanket immunity, the injustice of being condemned to suffer, fight, need to continually justify, stand suspicion, criticism and judgment, to hear moralizing and guilt discourse about symptoms that no one links to the violence, the injustice of being considered as responsible for victimization and their own unhappiness and injustice of being abandoned without consolation or care.
IV – Ending “it’s cultural,” “men are like this”
Of course, sexual violence—including if it is carried out in the private sphere, such as family, a couple, communities or companies—involves public power, all of society, and each citizen. These are crimes and misdemeanors that are subject to the law. The private sphere in no way indicates a no-law zone: the law applies to all and to everywhere.
Each person can claim the freedom to manage as they see fit in their family, sexuality; that cannot justify an attack on the rights and safety of others. The freedom and rights of each person are subject to limits, ending where another’s begin. Rights, including international human rights, stipulate restrictions of rights and especially of freedoms. It is thus set out in the European Convention of Human Rights. Freedom only has meaning in a fair world where equality of each person’s rights is respected, without discrimination. Freedom assumes respecting the law and should be freedom for all, the strong as well as the vulnerable: freedom, law and equality are indissociably linked. If such is not the case, then it is “freedom of the fox in the free henhouse.” We can also cite the famous phrase of Lacordaire: “Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free.” (Lacordaire, 1848)
In the same way, the argument “people do as they want in their home—it’s not our business” to justify the absence of intervention does not stand up, and does not dispense of the obligation to assist a person in danger, to denounce crimes and signal the child in danger as imposed by law. No ties, whether family, marital, community or religious, no work contract, no tacit contract, no situation of dependence or deprivation of liberty for any reason (educational, loving, health, security, economic, state) gives the right to exercise violence, escape the law, or fail to respect the rights of each human being. The rights of people are universal and do not suffer from exception. Children’s bodies do not belong to their parents, nor to institutions that care for them; the bodies of women do not belong to their spouses or partners; prostitutes’ bodies do not belong to their client or their pimp; patients’ bodies do not belong to the caregivers, etc.
Nevertheless, for a long time, sexual violence within the family and the couple were supposed to be in the private domain and not involving anyone from outside: “We do as we want in our home and among ourselves.” Similarly, the culture of origins, traditions, religion or ethnicity could be used as justification for a lot of behavior that attacked people’s rights, such as forced or early marriages, female genital mutilation, under the pretext that things have always been this way.
However, today there is still a certain cultural relativism allowing violence to not be considered as such, because in this context, it is normalized, or even necessary for group cohesion. Such is the case for prostitution, presented as the oldest profession in the world, as allowing certain women to escape poverty or depravation, and preventing others from being raped. In addition, according to such myths, prostitution comes from the sexual misery of lonely men or handicapped persons. Yet nothing is more false: money from prostitution does not profit prostitutes, rapes are not from people lacking sex, clients are mostly people in a relationship or having sexual relations outside of prostitution, the handicapped have other means for accessing sexuality based on reciprocal desires, and even if such is not the case, it would not under any circumstances justify violence or the attack on dignity suffered by prostitutes. (Legardinier, 2006; Ekman K. E., 2013).
Cultural relativism, sometimes with traces of racism and nearly always sexism and misogyny, does not recognize the universality of human rights to not suffer any attack on one’s psychological or physical person. It also fails to recognize the universality of the definition of violence (defined by WHO in 2012) as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation,” (http://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/en/) and the universality of traumatic consequences in the short, middle or long term (state of post-traumatic stress with anxiety, memory disorders under the form of intrusive memories, flashback or nightmares, and dissociative disorders).
From this relative point of view, the traumatic impact of certain behavior is cultural, meaning that it leads to trauma only if a society considers it abnormal. In other words, it is enough to be tolerated for there to be no psychotraumatic consequences; similarly, this is the reasoning of those who defend pedophilia—which is badly named—but also the reasoning of certain people for whom rape can have no consequence if feminists stopped finding it horrible. These assumptions are false: sexual violence and their traumatic impacts are universal. What changes is the recognition of their reality and seriousness. Hence the importance of denying attacks on the integrity of certain categories of people within certain cultures and traditions and the silence imposed on victims, who are condemned to survive with mechanisms of onerous safeguarding, such as dissociation. These mechanisms are not very visible or readable so as not to be too embarrassing. The dissociation victims do not inconvenience others, since the victims are anesthetized emotionally and physically. It is easy to pretend that the violence has no impact on them (whereas it is more significant), that they are used to it, that they can stand it without a problem, even that they are made for this. This is also what happens in the framework of prostitution.
Furthermore, this cultural relativism, traditional but also social, serves to clear men and their macho behavior under the pretext that their origins or belonging to certain privileged social classes (white men, artists, intellectual elites, politicians, financial magnates, high-level athletes, etc.) make them more inclined to be “great consumers of women, preferably young” and to sexual harassment. “They are like this. This is their culture, traditions, privileges. These are important people: they have the right to be served, to have fun: it’s seduction French-style”. This sexist domination behavior, these asserted rights of access to women’s bodies, are too seldom questioned, as it is part of a certain mythos that generates enormous tolerance, complicit amusement, even fascination, and jokes at the expense of the victims, who almost no one worries about.
In 2011, we witnessed the accusation of rape filed by Nafissatou Diallo, chambermaid in a New York hotel, put into question Dominique Strauss-Kahn: the class reflex functioned completely to minimize what was seen as a “lord’s rights over servants” as Jean-François Kahn, founder of Marianne magazine, was able to say when interviewed by France Culture. Christine Delphy wrote an eponymous book which compiles feminist writing in reaction to the concerted words of the politico-media class (Troussage de domestique, Delphy, 2011).
A study of the United Nations conducted in 2013 on 10,000 men living in Asia and the Pacific perfectly showed the banalization of rape and the privilege to rape claimed by certain men. Whereas 24% of men questioned recognized having raped at least one woman once in their lives, the first reason that 75% of them gave was that it was owed to them, no matter if she was consenting or not. The second reason that 58% of them reported was that they wanted to have fun; the rape was a kind of entertainment to get out of idleness. Following that were these reasons: the will to get revenge and punish for 37%, and alcohol for 27% of them (ONU, 2013; Jeweks R., 2013).
Remember that the Convention of the European Council or Istanbul Convention applicable since 2014, states clearly that no person can validly invoke what they perceive as an element of their culture, religion or any other personal reason to justify committing what in reality constitutes an element of a penal infraction, namely violence to women or children.
V – Finishing with “I know him, and it’s not possible—he could never do that” and the supposed frequency of false allegations
Very often the alleged rapist spontaneously benefits from a movement to defend him and class solidarity. This is especially the case if he is well-known, well-adjusted, from a good socio-professional and intellectual class, or considered as someone important and contributing to the community. He is undoubtedly viewed as innocent of the sexual crime and victim of an unjust accusation: “I know him, and it isn’t like him. He’s incapable of doing such a thing.” “He could have any woman he wants, so why would he rape someone?” “That doesn’t exist among us.”
These reactions rely on false premises: that rapes don’t exist in their milieu, but also that women and children who say they are rape victims frequently lie, and that there are a significant number of false allegations. This myth is tenacious, and many people say they know the person unjustly accused. Rationalizations thus feed these false premises: women lie for vengeance, money, because they are ashamed of their mistakes; girls lie because they are manipulated by their mother when sexual violence is revealed during a separation (a syndrome of parental alienation) or they are well-manipulated by psychotherapists (fake memories).
However, false allegations of sexual violence by those who file a complaint are rare: a well-documented US study in 2010 estimates that they are less than 6%, and another by Rumney in 2006 estimated them at 3-8%. A study by Trocmé analyzing false allegations of sexual violence committed on children estimated them at 6%—they were not due to children but often to parents or neighbours (Lisak, 2010 ; Rumney P. 2006, Trocmé N., 2005). Why in the name of this small number of people should we suspect all the others and be indifferent to those who suffer? Sexual violence is the only crime or misdemeanor for which we suspect the person who declares being a victim.
The assertion at the beginning is often “the rapist must be innocent” and not that he is presumed innocent. The victim is thus automatically suspected and put in question. When in fact sex is proved, as we have seen, everything is held back to assert that it wasn’t a real rape but a consenting relation.
VI – Ending “Why didn’t she say no, cry out, defend herself, or flee? Wasn’t she consenting?”
No, if a person said nothing, did not explicitly oppose, did not cry out, did not fight, did not move, that does not mean she was consenting to an act or to sexual behavior, nor that she lies in denouncing sexual attack or rape. On the contrary, the more terrorizing and worrisome the aggressor is, the more extreme the violence and the more pointless the situation is, and the more the victim will be paralyzed by a psychological state of freezing which is a normal phenomenon and universal in the case of violence. The victim, terrified by the acts suffered, is in a frozen state. It can be linked to physical violence, threats, as well as psychological violence. She is equally frozen when these acts are committed with gentleness but appear totally incongruous or misplaced.
Why are these false beliefs so tenacious? At best, the people who believe them lack imagination or memory. Freezing is an experience that everyone lives frequently, if only in the form of encountering intolerable words from another that can shock to the point of freezing us and leaving us wordless and without appropriate reactions. Or they lack knowledge about freezing and traumatic dissociation during violence. At worst, they adhere to denying the reality of rape and sexist stereotypes and are thus accomplices and project guilt on the victim.
We must acknowledge the risk taken by the victim encountering an armed or unarmed rapist threatening her life, with a criminal determination and hate that makes an extremely dangerous individual (victims almost all describe a look of a killer that paralyzed them), or a rapist who denies, objectifies, scorns, humiliates and plays on their distress. Have we forgotten that during a robbery or hold-up, the first recommendation is to try nothing, to submit and obey due to grave risks involved? Must absolving the rape victim of any suspicion of consent and agreement mean that she be seriously injured or dead? Catastrophic stereotypes truly die hard.
Skeptics could also reflect on what happens in the head of a rapist rather than focus on the victim and what she did. They could realize that it involves a predator who very rarely acts in an impulsive way, but who, like a hunter, premeditates, organizes the tracking, comes up with strategies to choose his victim, to isolate and constrain her and assure his impunity, and waits for the hour when the best conditions are reunited. The scenarios that he imagines are part of his perverse enjoyment. And in his strategies, he will elaborate plans so that the victim cannot cry out, fight or flee, so that no one can come to her aid. If he knows the victim (which is the case in more than 80% of rapes), he will organize his impunity in imposing silence, manipulating and confusing her to create doubts, feelings of shame and guilt in her.
VII Ending “if she did not file a complaint earlier or if she remained so long with him, it’s proof she was not raped.”
A sexual assault or rape victim is expected to leave, flee her attacker, speak about it and file a complaint immediately. If she stayed in contact with her attacker, it is supposed that she “wanted it.” Such thinking is very unjust for victims of violence and refuses to acknowledge the reality of what they live, the seriousness of threats, the pressure and manipulations that weigh on them. It fails to take into account numerous strategies aggressors use to organize their impunity and impose their presence indecently on victims, and the traumatic impact that the victims suffer and that trap them as well.
As almost always, the focus is placed on the victim, and people hold her accountable, calling on her to explain why she stayed in contact with an aggressor that raped or assaulted, why she came back to him, why she said nothing for so long, why she didn’t file a complaint earlier.
Of course, a person that just suffered a rape or sexual assault only has one idea: escape from the aggressor and never see him again. The victim wishes above all to be heard, believed, recognized, protected, surrounded, reassured, helped, comforted, healed. She certainly wants justice, but it must be possible, and when we know that more than 83% of sexual violence victims were never protected or recognized, we are far from the mark. It is particularly cruel to weigh suspicions on her because she was not able to escape her aggressors.
In a perfect world, victims must be immediately protected from aggressors, who should be prevented from coming into contact with the victim. In reality, this is far from the case. Even if the victim finds the strength to alert close ones, the aggressors benefit much of the time from total impunity and can remain where they are. Except the rare cases of sexual violence committed by a person that the victim never saw before (20% of adult women and 6% of minors) or in which the victim is assured of never seeing him again (which is rare, except in the case of the aggressor’s death or being at the other side of the world, and even in such a case, we cannot be sure the aggressor will not find the victim) or the case even more rare in which the aggressor is immediately arrested or imprisoned, the victim should live with the risk of seeing the aggressor again or having to deal with his presence. Whereas, in fact, the presence of the aggressor not only terrifies the victim, but also reactivates traumatic memory and forces her to relive the worst moments of violence, which is torture.
The victim, who knows her aggressor in 90% of cases, only rarely has the possibility to escape him, even less if she is a child or in a vulnerable situation, or if the aggressor is part of her family. To not be in contact anymore, the victim would have to leave her life environment, move, resign, lose her contacts, her work. She is often constrained to do so at her cost since it is often impossible without putting herself in danger or in a precarious situation.
The aggressor’s threats and physical restraints on the victim must also be considered, when they permanently control or sequester victims or deprive them of money or their identity papers. In this way, they organize financial and economic dependence that keep victims at their mercy. Similarly, we must not forget that during domestic or conjugal violence, the presence of sexual violence is a strong indicator of its dangerous nature. Moreover, victims who speak or leave are subject to even more violence (many conjugal homicides are committed after a separation). Threats can equally concern other members of the family, friends or even pets. Aggressors thus assure that they are taken seriously and keep the brakes on any attempt to flee. Often children fleeing are classified as running away and are trivialized when professionals do not look into what the child experienced in her home in order to take the enormous risk of leaving and being homeless alone.
Besides strategies of the aggressor and the associated risks, there are two other reasons that prevent victims from leaving: traumatic dissociation and traumatic memory.
Traumatic dissociation: if the victim stays in contact with her aggressors, the danger and paralysis persist as well as the extreme stress. The neurobiological defense mechanism continues to be activated, producing chronic traumatic dissociation in the victim. We have seen how this state disconnects the victim from her emotions, anesthetizes and keeps her from identifying and fully measuring what she is subjected to. The most serious events seem so unreal that they lose their consistency and seem to have never existed (dissociative amnesia). Since the victim feels neither emotions or the pain provoked by the violence, she trivializes it and tolerates even more—“it can’t be that serious since I can bear it.” The absence of reactions of those close to the victim end up trapping victims in emotional trivialization.
In addition, dissociation is a real psychologic hemorrhaging that empties the victims of their desires and annihilates their will. They feel empty, lost. They don’t know themselves, like a doll or a zombie, as if dead. (Lanius, 2010; Van der Hart, 2010). Hence, it is very difficult for the victim to project herself in another place or in another life; she feels incapable. This state greatly facilitates the aggressors’ hold on the victim to take over the psyche of the victim without resistance and reduce her to a slave.
Then the traumatic memory of violence takes a stronger hold on the victim: during violence, disjunction prevents sensory or cenesthetic emotional memory to be integrated by the hippocampus. This memory thus stays blocked in the cerebral amygdala, out of time and possibility to be analyzed and sorted. It is undifferentiated like a magma that contains a mixture of experience and feelings of the victim (terror, distress, desperation, nausea, disgust, pain, odors, etc.), the violence and the context, the words and emotions of the assailant(s) (cries, insults, murderous sentences, hate, contempt, perverse excitement, manipulations) all at the same time, as well as that of other victims and witnesses if present.
This traumatic memory takes charge more and more during episodes of disjunction which can last several minutes to months, even years if the violence repeatedly continues. Furthermore, just as a time bomb, as soon as the victim is momentarily no longer in a state of dissociation (for example if the attacker is absent, if she is with a protective person, or if violence even more extreme surpasses the disjunction capacities), the memory explodes and invades the psychic space of the victim in making her relive identically what had been registered in an undifferentiated way. The victim thus feels again the terror and the pain with an intolerable acuteness, the dissociation is no longer there to attenuate it. But she feels equally the hate and contempt of the attacker, his words and his guilt-inducing and contemptuous staging—“it’s all your fault, you deserved this, it’s good for you, you are nothing, you’re only good for this, etc.” But as she cannot identify these words as coming from an aggressor, she will more often consider them as her own production, as being there, in her head. This explains the guilt, the shame and hate the victim feels for herself, guilt and contempt that don’t come from herself but words and staging of the aggressor (Salmona, 2013).
As soon as the victim is not with the aggressor, she finds herself invaded by the violence and the emotional reactions linked to them, with the interior discourse that attacks and permanently disqualifies, and that she believes to be her own. The victim feels guilty, crazy, incapable, idiotic, ashamed of herself, which makes any awareness of her rights and any fleeing extremely difficult to imagine. The only moments that she can recuperate, organize her defense or flee, transform instead into hell. The traumatic memory makes her relive the terror and the distress felt during the violence, which plunges her into a great suffering.
In such conditions, how can the victim escape the hold of the aggressor and how can she envision autonomy? She is constantly under his control even when he is not there. And if she succeeds in saving herself and finding a refuge where she is safe, she will come out of dissociation, but she will be invaded by traumatic memory of all the violence that she suffered. Rather than being serene, she will feel intolerable distress and intrapsychic attacks that make her feel guilty and send her a catastrophic image of herself. Thus, there is a great risk that she returns with her aggressor, who has the power to immediately dissociate her, and it will anesthetize her. She could believe that she has him in her skin and cannot be rid of him, when actually she has him in her cerebral amygdala, which contains traumatic memory.
This behavior, seemingly paradoxical, is a habitual psychotraumatic process that could be treated by trained psychotherapists, or at least explained, which would allow the victim to anticipate and control these sentiments and contradictory emotions.
The oscillation between traumatic dissociation and traumatic memory explains why the victim is often condemned to stay under the hold of the aggressor, if he stays in regular or permanent contact with her. As long as this contact exists, the victim will have the greatest difficulties to identify the violence and to realize their seriousness, to realize her rights and to defend herself. Speaking of violence will be very difficult and filing a complaint even more.
VIII To finish with ignorance of psychotraumatic mechanisms: freezing, traumatic disassociation that are detrimental to victims
Ignorance concerning psychotraumatic symptoms mostly contributes to misconceptions and explains how victims often stay misunderstood. Worse, victims are put into question for reactions and behavior that are normal psychotraumatic consequences of sexual violence. (McFarlane, 2010).
In addition, this ignorance is responsible for disqualifying the victims’ word in the framework of police and judiciary procedures, since normal reactions due to traumatism like freezing, traumatic memory or disassociation put into question their credibility.
Freezing
The aggressor seeks to obtain and knows the state of freezing that paralyzes the victim, contrary to the average citizen and, lamentably, contrary to many professionals meant to care for victims. So it would be little to ask that everyone be informed about the consequences and the psychotraumatic mechanisms of violence, which have been perfectly known and described for over 30 years, and that all professionals in contact with victims be trained. This would prevent many unjustified questions to victims, stamped with the worst suspicions: “Why didn’t you say no? Why didn’t you cry out? Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you flee?”
Because rape creates a traumatic shock, a psychic breach, and sweeps away all the mental representations and all the certainties, the cortex is broken down. It is incapable of analyzing the situation and to react in the appropriate manner. The victim is petrified, unable to cry out, speak, or organize her defense in a rational manner.
To freeze a victim, the aggressor will:
- Terrorize her by the suddenness and brutality of the attack, reduce her to powerlessness through death threats, physical violence and a will for inexorable destruction
- Paralyze her by nonsense, the incongruous, incomprehensible, unthinkable of the aggression and its staging, which is then impossible to assimilate, such as in situations of incestuous rape and rapes committed by adults in the context of their functions of responsibility and authority for children and adolescents (parents, teachers, educators, sports or religious leaders, caregivers, etc.) or in the context of relations of trust in which safety should normally be assured (friends, spouses, doctors, physical therapists, work colleagues, employers, police, etc.).
The violent actions the most shocking are the “craziest”: those which have no sense in relation to the context, the victim, her story, what she did or didn’t do, what she did or didn’t say. Sexual violence is a part of it. This unthinkable violence has nothing to do with the victim but seems to be violence from another scene that the aggressor himself was subjected to except that he is now playing the role of the aggressor. The aggressor imposes that his victim play a role, in a scenario unknown to her, incomprehensible, that belongs only to the aggressor and that he stages for himself.
A patient of mine once reported to me what happened when she was raped under threat of a knife by a stranger who broke into a hotel room. After several minutes, she was coming out of her freezing state to look around for an object to knock out the attacker, who realized what she was doing and only needed to murmur “I love you” and “you like this, don’t you?” for her to fall back into her state of freezing.
Experiments carried out by American scientists showed evidence of this cortical paralysis on functional brain MRIs that were made each time on two Vietnam war veterans, one with serious psychotraumatic problems, and the other without. These functional MRIs allowed visualizing the brains zones that are activated (Bremner JD, 2003).
During the examination, the researchers had both veterans simultaneously listen to a neutral story, suddenly followed by a violent war scene. The war story brought about an emotional response in both people.
On the MRI of the veteran without psychotraumatic problems, numerous cortical zones are activated to respond to the stress launched by the story, allowing the veteran to analyze the situation (which is a story) and to modulate the emotional response, he develops an inner speech, allowing him to calm down. However, on the MRI of the traumatized veteran, there is an absence of activity in the cortical zones pertaining to decision (the frontal cortex doesn’t take color) and a hyperactivation of the emotional zone (cerebral amygdala); the veteran is frozen, just as during the initial traumatism, unable to calm the emotional response that the story triggers, with a risk of a panic attack or dissociation.
This freezing sought by the aggressor is at the origin of psychotraumatic troubles that can benefit him, particularly a dissociation and a traumatic memory.
With this freezing, the cortex is out of order and cannot control the emotional response which continues to escalate. The body is quickly under extreme stress, adrenaline and cortisol become rapidly toxic for the cardio-vascular system and the brain, representing a vital risk to the body (Shin, 2006; Rauch, 2006). To escape, the brain (like an overvoltage in an electric circuit) will disable the circuit responsible for stress, which will have the effect of extinguishing the emotional response, but also disconnecting the fibers that inform the cortex of emotions, resulting in emotional anesthesia and an analgesia: the emotions and the pain are there, they are really present but cannot be felt, integrated, expressed or shared as such. (Yehuda, 2007) This leads to the victim feeling disconnected from the outside world, from the body and its emotions; it creates a sensation of unreality, depersonalization, emptiness, and the victim feels like a spectator of events. (Salmona M., 2008, 2012)
Traumatic dissociation
The victim is frozen, disconnected from emotions, pain, and unable to react. This leads to a pseudo-tolerance and prevents the victim from protecting herself and having adapted defensive reactions. The victim ends up like a puppet, handed over to her aggressor who can do as he wants. The aggressor thus has the possibility of assuring his control and his influence to easily impose his guilt-creating scenario (this is your fault, you were looking for it, you deserve what I did, you like it, etc.) or mystifying (because I love you, it’s normal, it’s not serious). He can even achieve making the victim play an active role and participate in violence, in order to impose behavior that subsequently will be the source of guilt and shame for her, that he can reproach her about afterwards.
The aggressor will not be bothered by mirror neurons and automatic empathy that they generate in the face of others’ emotions, because the dissociated victim cannot give any readable emotion except feelings of emptiness and unattachment. This saving dissociation enables the victim to survive but is dangerous: the victim remains without reaction in the face of the worst violence while the aggressor can commit the worst abuses without emotional hindrance. In addition, this absence of reaction and feelings of unreality aggravate doubts and guilt in the victim and prevent identification of the reality that she is subjected to, denouncing the aggressor, demanding her rights or realizing she is a victim.
The phenomenon of psychic freezing and traumatic dissociation serve as a pretext by close ones or professionals for putting the victim into question and considering her consenting, when these phenomena are in fact psychotraumatic symptoms which are pathognomonic from the seriousness of violence suffered.
In sum, sustained by all the stereotypes about sexual violence and unawareness of freezing and dissociation phenomenon, the aggressor has every interest to invoke the consent of the victim to ensure his impunity.
IX Ending “giving in is consent”
Giving in is not consenting, as many physical, moral or economic constraints can allow a person to impose acts or sexual behavior on another person that does not want to, submitting to them without a word or opposing.
In France, the law does not define rape or sexual aggression with regards to acts or words of the victim but only actions of the assailant. It is sexual assault or rape if the assailant used violence, constraint (which can be physical or moral), threat or surprise to achieve his objective, to render the victim incapable of manifesting her real will and to impose (meaning obliging to do or submit to) sexual acts. Clearly in the letter of criminal law:
- Article 222-22 “Sexual assault is any sexual attack committed with violence, coercion, threat or surprise.”
- Article 222-23 “Any act of penetration, whatever the nature, committed on another person or on the author through violence, constraint, threat or surprise is a rape.”
The law recognizes a moral constraint invalidating the absence of the victim demonstrating non-consent or invalidating consent itself, if that consent is invalidated by the vulnerability of the victim and the control of the aggressor over the victim.
Today the criminal law is clear. No matter the victim’s past, the violation consists exclusively of the strategies implemented by the aggressor to attain his objective “no matter the nature of the existing relations between the aggressor and his victim, including if they are married” (criminal law). An aggressor can no longer defend himself by saying that he legitimately could believe in consent of the victim because of their relationship.
Nevertheless, there are many cases that defy the law: an adult man daring to say that a child was consenting when he did everything to manipulate the child; a sixty-year-old man saying that a young girl was consenting while he used his authority to put pressure on her; a psychiatrist claiming that a patient was consenting during consultations when he was abusive in his functions and with the vulnerability of the victim that he knew well; a client, a hierarchical superior, daring to say that an employee was consenting when he took advantage of her situation of professional and financial dependence; men saying that a woman or adolescent was consenting in sexual acts in groups in a cave, on the ground; a man claiming his wife was consenting after a scene of violence…
Sexual violence is analyzed under the angle of sexuality, desire and drive, whereas it is about violence, a will to destroy, instrumentalizing and submitting. It is the hate or the omnipotence that is eroticized (Dworkin, 2007). We don’t investigate the aggressor’s strategy, his premeditation, or the existence of his other victims. The law is not considered: the victim has a right to wear a miniskirt, have a drink with a man, drink, trust someone, etc. Whereas the assailant did not have any right to impose sexual acts, and he knew it.
Consent to sexual relations should be free and clear, and the will of the person should not be abolished, hindered, or forced. A sexual relation is not coerced.
To have sexual relations with someone who is too young (before 15 years old, or before 18 years old in case of incest, handicap or if the aggressor is a person in authority) with someone who has drunk too much, is drugged or unconscious—and thus incapable of giving consent or to oppose and realize what is happening—is rape.
There are “seduction” strategies that use pressure or push a person to give in to sexual demands through emotional blackmail: “You can’t do that, look at what state you’ve put me in” or staging indebtedness for a dinner at a restaurant, help given, a favor or work done, accommodation, or protection—“You can’t refuse me after all I’ve done for you.” All of these are forms of sexual violence.
In the same way, strategies used to surprise or deceive by acting educational, playful or caring, by taking advantage of the trust or ignorance of the victim, are also sexual violence.
With the myth of “real rape” the ignorance of the definition of rape and sexual assault, and staging forced or indebted “seduction,” victims cannot get a hold of themselves, and therefore because it is a forced denial, many victims consider that what they experienced not sexual violence. They find themselves with uneasiness, suffering and psychotraumatic symptoms that they cannot connect to the severe trauma that they went through, since they cannot identify it for what it is. Thus, they consider themselves abnormal, incapable of doing well, and responsible for their own unhappiness.
At the same time the aggressors are cleared of all guilt; they were well-served and no one comes to hold them accountable for the severity of their actions or the consequences on the victims’ health. They can then serenely continue to serve themselves as they like, considering that it is their right to use another’s body for their pleasure, to defile and make another person suffer, humiliating and violating the dignity of a person, under cover of all-permitting sexuality, no matter what the victim wants, her suffering or the consequences that he conveniently ignores.
Consent must be free, informed and framed in the respect of rights of the person.
Consent not only should not be extorted by violence, threat, physical or moral threat or surprise as stipulated by French law, but it should “be given voluntarily, as the result of the free will of the person, evaluated in the context of the relevant circumstances,” meaning that it should be expressed clearly and coming from the will of a free person who is informed and is in possession of all intellectual and emotional capacities to give consent. The person must have all knowledge to be aware of any consequences as required by the Council of Europe Convention on the prevention and fight against violence towards women and domestic violence known as the Istanbul Convention, ratified by France, applicable and mandatory since August 1, 2014. This Convention is a reminder that the notion of consent should be studied depending on context, the state of the person and the psychotraumatic impact present, as well as depending on the moral constraint exercised by the assailant against the victim. These elements should be considered during investigative procedures as clues: “A contextual evaluation of proof in order to determine, case by case, if the victim consented to the sexual act. Such an evaluation should take into account all the series of behavioral reactions to sexual violence and rape that the victim can adopt and should not be founded on relative hypotheses on typical behavior in the same case. It is also appropriate to ensure that the interpretations of legislation and the legal proceedings in the cases of rape are not inspired by sexist stereotypes and myths concerning masculine and feminine sexuality.”
This means that at any moment a person should be able to give or retract consent. Hence invalidating consent to the act or sexual behavior of a child (we call for the establishment of an age threshold for non-consent which still does not exist in the law), a person mentally handicapped, under the influence (alcohol, drugs, medicine), unconscious (asleep, anesthetized, passed out), under constraint—whether physical (through violence, threats, contention or confinement), moral (under the influence of people in authority, in situations of dependence linked to age or vulnerability) or economic—and persons in psychological sideration or traumatic dissociation.
Granting access to one’s body and intimacy signifies an acceptance to be highly vulnerable and taking the risk to be used and alienated within that which should be the most protected and submit to no infraction: one’s physical integrity and especially orifices and the inside of the body. This is not done without great confidence in the person to whom we entrust our body, and without the conviction that the person will not abuse this situation and will respect at any moment our will, physical and psychological integrity. This is without mentioning risks of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy for women and post-pubescent girls.
This absolute respect of the rights of the person is valid in the frame of intimate relations but also within medical, paramedical and health care acts that require access to the body, even more so if they are invasive with infraction of orifices and physical integrity. In no case, except for extreme emergency situations or loss of consciousness, would a doctor access the body of a patient without their explicit and informed consent, health care should not cover breaches of patients’ rights. They must be strictly regulated and require the agreement of patients or their guardians, to give them complete and honest information regarding scientific knowledge, and to ensure that they have well understood. As soon as they are of an age to understand, children should be informed, and their opinion should be taken into account as imposed by the International Convention of the Rights of the Child. The scandal in 2015 of vaginal touching on anesthetized patients under the pretext of training medical students is an example of serious breaches in the physical, psychological and sexual integrity of patients.
Consent is thus regulated by the rights of the person. It is not because the person accepts to renounce their rights so that another benefits that this latter person can be cleared—that person remains entirely responsible for respecting the dignity and the physical and psychological integrity of another person. To push the example to the extreme, it is not because a person accepts to be mutilated, enslaved, killed, cut in pieces, or have their eyes cut out that a person can do it. These acts remain no less than crimes punished by the law, and compensating the person financially changes nothing. On the contrary, the body is inalienable and cannot be bought.
Only some exceptions can be tolerated for medical reasons: to treat and save the life of a person, doctors can be brought to mutilation for example (amputating limbs or organs to save a person’s life, etc.). Equally, to save the life of the person or to heal, with free and informed consent, doctors may take from another one the blood, gametes, kidneys, on the condition that their action in no case harms the physical and psychological health of the person and that it is not subject to a financial transaction nor happens in moral constraints or situations with inequality of rights. These situations are thus subjected to strict ethical rules and can only be justified in cases of forces majeures and health reasons. This excludes genital sexual mutilation and any bodily infringement that cannot in any case by justified by tradition, culture, religion, education or sexuality (in sadomasochist relations). This also excludes any sale of organs or any loan of organs or human products to be paid for, that are not ethically or medically justified: pregnancy for another, sexual assistance and prostitution are within this framework and are prohibited by law in France.
X. To finish with "women like to be abused"
With these myths about sexuality, some form of violence is somehow considered normal, just do not overdo it, not too much… which may explain the success of 50 Shades of Grey, the EL James novel that presents to women - as attractive - a violent and domineering male sexuality. Sexuality would therefore be a separate human activity, where violence would not be violence, because it is inherent to a violent sexual desire. Sexuality is thus considered as a zone of lawlessness where women, especially, could consent to give up their rights, and consent that their physical and mental integrity is not respected, under the pretext that it is desire, sexual, and sadomasochistic activities.
This conception of sexuality and sexual desire makes the boundary between sexuality and violence very blurred, difficult to identify, and it masks a large amount of sexual violence. A rape, "a true one", to be recognized in this context will therefore necessarily have to be accompanied by a great deal of violence or death threats. Furthermore a victim, "a real one", to prove that she was not consenting, will have to demonstrate it and therefore provide physical evidence of the violence, the constraints and threats she has suffered, or demonstrate the surprise, that is to say the absence of opportunity to consent because she was not conscious. In this system of thought consent becomes extensive. To yield to the pressures of a man can be considered as consenting to it, since submission to the desire of man is the mode of sexuality attributed to women, and the supposed masochism of women allows for seeing abuse as consenting.
The definition of sexual assault and rape, which is based on notions of violence, threats, constraints and surprises, and therefore the non-consent of victims, may be diverted in many situations, since women are presumed to consent to degrading and humiliating situations. Their will and real desire are not recognized: a woman, a teenager who says no, may mean yes, a woman, a teenager who does not want a sexual act, can love him in spite of herself...And talking about rape in these situations would be seen as a moralizing view of sexuality.
A good part of society is colonized by this catastrophic vision of a predatory and violent sexuality, including journalists.
Sexuality has been saturated with violence for so long, that it is very often perceived through the deforming filter of staged predation. Gender stereotypes, male dominance and misconceptions about male sexuality allow for an equivalence between sexuality and aggressive "legal" conduct, and lead to tolerating prostitution, pornography and violent sexual conduct between adults seen as “consenting.”
Moreover, racialized women, victims of discrimination because of their origins, skin color, religion, are victims of specific forms of hypersexualization (Laure Salmona, 2016). Women of African descent represent for whites the emblem of a "wild" and "exotic" sexuality: their body is frequently animalized, with metaphors comparing them for example to black panthers and describing their feline walk. Women of Maghrebi origin, also considered exotic, also embody in the imagination of men a transgressive fantasy: virgins, veiled, submissive that would be basically frustrated and thirsty for sex. Thus, they are fantasized as transgressive sexual objects to the point that "beurette" (nickname given to young women of supposed or real Maghreb origin) is the keyword most sought after by the French who frequent pornographic sites. As for women of Asian origin, they embody the fantasy of the submissive woman, the "Geisha" that can be dominated and that exists only to fulfill the desires of men.
Pornography defines male sexuality as an aggression against women, a frenzied penetration more and more violent and extreme in all possible ways, including especially the most degrading. It trivializes violence against women by spreading the idea that they are masochistic, that they like to be hurt and humiliated. It also uses prostituted women who simulate enjoyment on the screen. So it trivializes the intrinsic violence to prostitution by spreading the idea that women can have an orgasm on order, by simple payment. Few people who watch pornography are concerned about the terrible filming conditions for women and all the violence they experience as a result of attacks on their dignity and traumatic consequences. Almost nobody thinks about all the violence they went through, most often in their childhood, to be sufficiently dissociated and anesthetized to support the pain and the degrading and humiliating staging. All this violence is legally covered by the alibi of consent.
This confusion between sexuality and violence is fostered by the use of degrading vocabulary and speech about sexuality. The majority of insults are sexual, as a lot of jokes, innuendoes, and “dirty” remarks. The words to say sexual violence are extremely confusing, as so aptly described by Marilyn Baldeck (General Delegate of the European Association Against Violence Against Women at Work, AVFT) in “Les mots pour dire les violences sexuelles” (Baldeck M., 2010). Instead of sexual assault and rape, one speaks of touching, caresses, oral sex, sexual intercourse which are terms belonging to the register of love and sexuality. Conversely, violent vocabulary from the war and hunting spectrum is used to talk about sexuality. This general confusion conveys a degraded image of the woman, reduced and fragmented as a sexual object (ubiquitous in the media, advertising, film and much of the press). It also creates a predatory and impulsive vision of male sexuality with caricature roles attributed to men and women. Many do not recognize themselves in these caricatures, but a large part adheres to them by conformism. This pornographic depiction of sexuality infects relationships between men and women. Furthermore, it trivializes a lot of sexual violence.
Therefore, sexual crimes receive preferential treatment, a separate status, where crimes are not crimes, on the pretext of consenting, without reference to the universal rights of human beings to integrity and dignity (as if consenting to be killed or tortured could justify these crimes), where the dominant could have the privilege to enslave, sequester, abuse, insult, humiliate under cover of sexual desire, games, even love, and, even worse, for the good of their victims, since this violence is supposed to make them enjoy it by masochism, the eroticization of subordination and pain—the pornography seems to prove it.
This confusion between violence and sexuality fosters serious addictions to prostitution and pornography, with a thriving sex industry offering increasingly violent practices, films and images with younger and younger women. The result is an increase in the trafficking of children and women, sex tourism, sexual crime and much of the violence against women, including prostitution and pornography.
Finally, this confusion between violence and sexuality contributes to the maintenance of inequality between the sexes and also deprives a majority of men and women of access to authentic sexuality and a real love encounter made of respect, exchanges and discovery of each other.
When the first sexual experiences in childhood are violence, sexuality can be completely colonized by the traumatic memory of the aggression, and each sexual situation then carries violent images or degrading remarks which are invading and seem inextricably linked to its own sexuality. Worse, the perverse enjoyment of the aggressor, which was extremely traumatic (enjoyment of torture, destruction, terror, soiling and degrading), can invade any experience of subsequent enjoyment and make it intolerable, impossible to take on, to the point of sometimes having no other choice but to give it up in order not to get lost, because this aggressor’s pleasure infected by the violence could make one believe that one enjoys one's own degradation or pains inflicted. All this is false, of course, but traumatic memory is difficult to decode and may seem convincing. This generates a disastrous image and self-esteem that makes victims even more vulnerable, and that can lead to suicidal acts.
Thus, the violence that saturates sexuality maintains a confusion between real desire and addiction to the stress of being anesthetized, with a painful excitement linked to a traumatic sensory memory of the aggressor’s sexual arousal, which must be extinguished at all costs. This violence also creates a confusion between real pleasure and enjoyment, and a brutal orgasmic-like relief related to disjunction and emotional anesthesia, and finally a confusion between fantasies and visual and sensory reminiscences from traumatic memory (Salmona, 2013).
A severely traumatized sexuality
Many people who have suffered sexual violence must therefore deal with a severely traumatized sexuality infected with unidentified psychotraumatic symptoms. As they find themselves alone with this traumatized sexuality, without any tools to understand it, relate it to the violence suffered in the past and separate and release their sexuality from the traumatic memory of violence that the aggressor implanted, they will have no other possibility than to integrate it as it is or to reject it as a whole. They are also alone in the face of a society in denial, which provides them with no reference to navigate, and which pushes them even further into alienating sexual representations. These mystifying stereotypes about women's sexuality, constantly relayed by society, are based on psychotraumatic symptoms: the virgin, the frigid woman, the passive woman, the nymphomaniac, the easy girl, the sex bomb, the slut, the prostitute etc. And all those who do not want to give up a real encounter with love–and fortunately they are many–must fight to get out of these reductive and imprisoning schemes. Women, as well as men, could gain a lot by recovering a non-traumatic and free sexuality with full access to their desire and pleasure.
It is therefore necessary to fight against all myths and misconceptions about sexuality and sexual violence, about misrepresentation of sexual desire among men and women, to establish an education for nonviolent and respectful sexuality, and to fight against prostitution systems and pornography, which are violence against people and maintain a violent image of sexuality, degrading to women regarded as sexual objects that are naturally available to male desire.
The alibi of sexuality and its liberation, sexual desire, love, tenderness, education, play, punishment is a very effective mystification that has justified and disguised violence to ensure almost perfect impunity for many years. The perpetrators know very well what they are doing. Intentionally, they organize traps and staging that leave no chance for their prey.
They manipulate and cover their crimes with lying speech, and they make adults and teenagers believe that they are attacking them for love, jealousy, sexual frustration. They make children believe that it is for their good, to educate them, that they make them live an exceptional experience that ordinary people cannot understand.
No, sexual acts imposed on adult victims have nothing to do with a compelling desire, a sexual need, an intense frustration, an excess of love. This violence is about a desire to destroy, to annihilate the will of others, to force them to submit, to enslave and use the victim, and to relish it.
No, sexual acts committed on children have nothing to do with tenderness, love or education, or sexual desire. It is a perverse excitement against the forbidden, the transgression. It is about wanting to dirty, to degrade, to desecrate what is most precious: a helpless child. These transgressive acts tilt the child into a world where all the landmarks of his childhood explode, where they are reduced to an object, a "toy" in the hands of the aggressors, in a world where those who are supposed to protect them are those who destroy them.
Sexual privileges to abolish
One can wonder why so few people mobilize to revolutionize the relations between men and women and reconsider sexuality by decolonizing it of any violence, to fight against the inequalities and to protect in priority the most vulnerable, to denounce the staging of those who present themselves as superior beings entitled to "innate" privileges, such as the ability to subjugate and possess the body of others for their own pleasure. Why aren’t feminism, the fight against gender discrimination and the protection of children absolute priorities?
XI To end misrepresenting "Lolitas" and "Oedipus" to justify sexual violence
The alleged seductive attitude of little girls and teenagers towards adults or their fathers is one of those misconceptions and “diversions” that allow us to evade the reality of violence against girls. (18% of women have experienced sexual violence as minors, WHO, 2014). Ferenczi spoke of "confusion of language between adults and the child, the language of tenderness and passion" in 1932, describing the trauma that the child undergoes when, at his request for love and tenderness (the child’s language of tenderness ), he receives a perverse sexual behavior of seduction from adults who take care of him (the adult’s language of passion). Ferenczi speaks of a shock, an emotional concussion in reaction to this aggression which leads to an annihilation of the ego. This concussion can be physical and psychological, anxiety being its immediate reaction (Ferenczi S., 1932).
What a child or young adolescent wants is certainly not to be penetrated, nor to suffer sexual touching by an adult. She wants recognition, filial love, she would like an adult to reassure her, find her beautiful, intelligent, worthy of attention. As these children and adolescent girls seek affection, some adults take advantage of it to perversely turn this legitimate demand into a sexual one. This is a huge scam; these adults betray the trust of children by perverting their request into one of their own.
Deforming Nabokov's book
The term "Lolita" is emblematic of society’s swallowing whole the deforming mystifications of pedophile criminals. The title of Nabokov's novel "Lolita" has become a common name designating a seductive teenage girl who traps an adult man who will not be able to resist her charms: the perversion is perceived as from the teenager; the victim, the poor man. Yet Nabokov's novel is the opposite of framing the teenager--Lolita is a 12-year-old girl victim of a predator’s evil strategy who set his sights on her as soon as he saw her, and who, to achieve his ends, will marry the mother of his prey. It is therefore an incest with devastating consequences (Fall, 2010). Nabokov accurately describes the perverse mechanics of the predator Humbert Humbert who is driven by a desire for transgression, domination and destruction that he will disguise as love (Nabokov, 1955).
The pedophile does not like children despite what the misnamed term of pedophile might lead us to believe. He despises them as vulnerable people and wants to enjoy their bodies, to degrade them, to dirty them by reducing them to sexual objects that he uses when he wants, as he wants, regardless of the consequences. And to degrade them even more, what could be crueler and more monstrous than to make them responsible for their own misfortunes, in their eyes and those of all the others, thus imposing on them hellish guilt and shame. The trick is played, all defense and all word of the victim is padlocked; she is then totally at his mercy.
Let's turn the floor over to Sokhna Fall - who has written several articles on this novel - to set the world straight: “The story of this little paper victim seems to me to be that of the children who are victims of sexual assault and representations attached to it. Humbert Humbert's first sexual ‘deformation’ of Lolita […] will be followed by an endless series of other deformations that eternally assign this adolescent girl, like so many others, to the place of a victim accused of her own victimization. What does Humbert Humbert say about it? He admits, for example, ‘Why does her way of walking – it's just a child, note a simple child – get me so awfully excited? Let's analyze it. Feet slightly retracted. A sort of elastic twist below the knee that continues until the fall of each step. A slightly dragging gait. Very childish, infinitely touting.’” Humbert in no way describes a "teenage girl in love with a forty-something who tries to seduce him with his perverse maneuvers." He describes exactly how he is the one who wishes to appropriate the innocent casualness of this little girl. What Lolita is "touting" so much for Humbert, as for all pedophiles, is her "infantilism" (Fall S., 2010).
A diversion from the Oedipus myth
The Oedipus complex described by Freud functioned with the same diversion of the myth and the experience of his patients by transforming an Oedipus victim of his biological parents into a culprit of parricide and incest, and by transforming the hysterical victim of incestuous sexual assault, who repressed memories of this trauma, into one guilty of forbidden and unconscious sexual desires. From the sexuality traumatized by aggressors into the hysterical, he passes off as an aggressive traumatic sexuality generating unconscious conflicts which will be repressed (Masson). It is no longer perceived as real trauma, which is removed from consciousness by defense mechanisms, but as sexual desires in children which threaten the self and which must be repressed (Freud, 1897).
Just as Lolita is the innocent victim of a criminal, the Oedipus of Antiquity is the innocent victim of infanticide parents and a rapist father. If Oedipus kills his father Laïos (in self-defense) and becomes king by marrying his mother Jocaste (as a reward, for having solved the enigma of the sphinx and rid the city of Thebes of this scourge), it is in complete ignorance, since he does not know that they are his parents.
Before becoming parricidal and incestuous Oedipus knows nothing of his history, nothing of the certain death to which he had been exposed as a newborn by his biological parents, the couple Laios and Jocasta, the former having abandoned him to the wild beasts after carefully piercing his feet to make sure no one would pick him up.
If Laïos and Jocasta exposed their newborn son, it is to escape this famous oracle of the Pythia concerning them: if a male child was born, when he became an adult, he would kill his father and marry his mother. In Thebaid, we learn the reason for this oracle of Hera forbidding Laïos to have a male child: it is a divine punishment in response to a serious transgression that he committed while he took refuge with King Pelops for political reasons. During this stay, he "seduced" and kidnapped Pelops' son, the handsome and young Chrysippus, when he was supposed to initiate him in chariot racing. According to one version, Chrysippus, in shame, committed suicide, and Pelops asked Hera to avenge him, hence the oracle. And since Laius and Jocasta do not respect the divine prohibition and still have a son, their solution to escape the oracle will be to get rid of him by exposing him to death.
And here is the portrait of the biological parents of Oedipus: a rapist father, parents transgressing divine prohibition, and infanticides, criminals.
Oedipus never wanted to kill his father or marry his mother, but he was the very real victim of an attempted infanticide, and he will not be saved except with the compassion of a shepherd who will deliver him before then entrusting him to a couple of kings of Corinth, Polybius and Merope, who adopt him without ever revealing the truth to him. So, when he becomes a young adult, Oedipus will hear a guest say to him that he is a foundling. He will go to question the Oracle of Delphi to find out more and it is on this occasion that he will learn the terrible prophecy, “you will kill your father and you will marry your mother” without knowing more. Horrified by this oracle, he will flee from Corinth. During his flight, he will meet the crew of an irascible old man who, finding that Oedipus had not withdrawn enough to let him pass, threatens him and kills his horse. And this is how Oedipus to defend himself will kill Laïos then marry Jocaste after having found the answer to the question of the sphinx… When he learns by Tiresias that he killed his father and married his mother, he will feel such dread and such guilt that in the version of Sophocles, he will gouge out his eyes.
On the side of Oedipus' parents, the violence is well-planned and intentional, and on the side of Oedipus, nothing is intentional, on the contrary he seeks to respect the law. If he puts out his eyes and banishes himself from Thebes after learning the truth, it is to punish himself for crimes he did not want to commit.
Pedophilia, so badly named
If it has to be claimed once again, pedophilia, so badly named, is not sexuality, nor a sexual orientation, but is the exercise in the power of instrumentalization and destruction in the context of a balance of power. Sexual violence is used as a hyper-effective weapon (also used in torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity) to destroy, deny the dignity and rights of a person, possess him and reduce him to a situation of a slave, over which the aggressor has all power that he can consume when he wants, as he wants.
The alibi of sexuality and its liberation, of sexual desire, love, tenderness, education, is a very effective mystification which makes it possible to ensure almost perfect impunity for many years, even to invoke the alleged responsibility or complicity of the victim. Sexual pedophiles are predators and they know very well what they are doing. Intentionally, they organize traps and staging that leave no chance for their prey. They manipulate and coat their crimes with false speech. They approach children under a mask, presenting themselves as kind, sympathetic, caring adults, and they manage to create in children admiration, emotional dependence and disqualification, so that the feelings of anguish and terror of the children in the face of violence will be covered with a smoke curtain of misunderstanding and doubts.
No, we repeat, sexual acts committed on children have nothing to do with tenderness, love, education or with sexual desire.
The aggressor’s purpose is to portray himself as a tyrant and rule unchallenged over one or more slaves used as a drug to anesthetize himself and fuel his omnipotence.
XII To put an end to “she was looking for it”
All the questions asked to victims about their behavior imply that they had something to do with the occurrence of violence, are responsible in one way or another, did not behave in the right way, exposed themselves irresponsibly, that there was surely something else to be done that would have avoided the violence, and that as a last resort it was up to them to protect themselves more effectively or make the perpetrator of the violence better understand that they did not want him to or that he should not behave in this way. So "too bad for them, they knew it well, should have been more careful, and have nothing to complain about.”
No, of course no rape victim was looking for it. These arguments are false and particularly unjust and cruel since they make the victim responsible for the violence she has suffered. In such a system, which works in reverse, it would not be for the aggressors to control their violence, but rather for the victims to do it for them. If they do not succeed, too bad for them if they are attacked or raped, they will have deserved it, they have only themselves to blame, etc. This system is based on all the stereotypes that we have already seen: sexuality is violent, sexual violence is inevitable, men are like that, with irrepressible impulses, women are warned of danger, they must protect themselves and ensure their safety; if they do not, they want to take the risk of being raped ...In this perverse system, we quietly ignore the fact that wearing a short skirt or having a drink with a man is not prohibited by law, while sexually assaulting or raping a woman is an offense or a crime.
The main blind spot in this system is therefore the lack of recourse to the law. It ignores the fact that in any case the aggressor does not have the right to commit such violence and that, like any citizen, he is not supposed to ignore the law. At the same time, the victim did not break any law. A woman has every right to go for a walk alone at night, to wear a slit skirt or a low-cut dress, wear a lot of makeup, drink alcohol, have coffee at a friend's house. By no means does this mean that she is sexually available; raping her is a crime. Just as if you are in front of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, it absolutely does not entitle you to take advantage of it, so it is a crime with aggravating circumstances.
Another blind spot in this system is the failure to recognize the aggressor’s responsibility and intentions. His will—to harm, destroy, and cause suffering as much as possible, to oppress, reduce his victim to an object, dehumanize her for his interest and his pleasure, and even, heightened with cruelty, to enjoy it—is disavowed. Only his rationalizations and the deceptive staging set up to absolve himself of any guilt are relayed and believed (Sironi, 1999).
A perpetrator very often premeditates his act, and what triggers the aggression, I repeat, is not what the victim is, or what she did, but many strategic elements that belong to the aggressor, ranging from “I have her on hand, so it will be her,” “nice as she is, isolated as she is, it will be easier,” to choices corresponding to a scenario of very specific and calculated aggression, requiring a precise casting, and in situations which could guarantee his impunity—“she is dependent on me, so she cannot escape or denounce me,” “she is unconscious, which is perfect.” The victim is most often interchangeable and chosen based on ease and proximity criteria, to play a role in a scenario that has nothing to do with her, set up by the aggressor through coercion or manipulation.
However, in the event of sexual violence, the victim is very frequently considered as being at the origin of the violence. This is also the logical consequence of the common misconception that violence is inevitable: if male sexuality is a predatory sexuality, if the aggressors are in the grip of sexual impulses they cannot control, if a woman "provokes and excites them,” the means for the victims to escape this violence is to anticipate and avoid it. They are supposed to avoid putting themselves in jeopardy, but also to self-censor to avoid any provocation, and to be permanently chaperoned. Women are expected to refrain from engaging in behaviors considered to be risky. Since they are warned by society, they are supposed to ensure their own protection, so the burden of not being violated falls on them, and too bad for them if they have not developed all the means to protect themselves: they will have deserved it.
What are these expected means that they must take to avoid being raped or attacked?
- not to be too exciting, therefore not to be too sexy (too short of a skirt, too tight, too plunging neckline, too high heels, too suggestive makeup, etc.), but beware if, despite all their efforts, they are too young, too pretty, too appetizing (to a patient raped at 16 by four men, her grandmother had said: “It's normal. You're like candy.”);
- not to provoke risky situations, i.e. not to be too smiling, too attractive, not to flirt, not to agree to go out with someone you don't know enough, much less going to his house which would be tantamount to being presumed consenting for sexual relations;
- not to put yourself in danger, i.e. not to go out alone in the evening in isolated places, to avoid infamous places, not to drink or take drugs, not to jog alone, not to hitchhike, etc.;
- to be able to clearly say no, repeatedly and sufficiently loudly, to defend oneself effectively, to be able to find help. The aggressors being, according to these false representations, unable to control themselves, it is up to the potential victims to know how to defend oneself;
- to be protected at all times, i.e. to be under the protection of one's family, a spouse and to go out accompanied;
- of course, avoid taking the metro or any other public transport, going to places reserved for men, doing men's jobs etc.
Let us remember that sexual violence takes place in all circles, at all ages and does not concern only "attractive" women according to the canon of seduction; that children and women with disabilities suffer much more sexual violence; that it is relatives who overwhelmingly commit this violence, and in 50% of cases it is a family member against children or a spouse or partner against adults, most often at the victim's home.
Remember that at least one in five women has suffered sexual assault in her life and one in 16 men, and that nearly one in six women has suffered rape or attempted rape, and one in twenty men (CSF survey, 2008); that each year 84,000 adult women, 16,000 adult men, 124,000 minor girls and 30,000 minor boys experience rape or attempted rape (INSEE-ONDRP, 2014, CSF, 2008), and that 81% of the first sexual violence is suffered before 18 years old, 51% before 11 years old, 21% before 6 years old (IVSEA survey, 2015).
These realities show how absurd and indecent the reasoning implicating victims is. Its purpose is to not recognize the victims in order to maintain reassuring facades. In this world of denial, victims of sexual violence are concealed, as recognizing a victim implies naming one or more aggressors. However, as the vast majority of aggressors are relatives—and more particularly people with whom we share our family, conjugal, romantic, professional life—to denounce them would jeopardize a whole “idyllic” vision of our society, where it is necessary to make believe that the family, the couple always protects the weakest, that hierarchical work always protects the most dependent and vulnerable employees. Yet, as everyone knows, nothing could be further from the truth. Violence is necessary to subdue and create from scratch people who will be considered inferior and with less rights and worth. Also, to continue this mystification which allows many individuals to grant themselves enormous privileges at the expense of the people they are supposed to protect, it is important not to have too much visibility of the violence and the victims. The victims must therefore be concealed, so that they do not exist: if there are no victims, there is no violence and therefore no aggressors or criminals.
And if, despite this denial, some victims manage to be visible, then they are forced to take responsibility for their situation, to appear to be guilty. Anyway, by this logic, since they're supposed to live in a hierarchical system where they should have been protected, if they haven't been protected something is wrong with them. They are then suspected for not doing the right thing, being too weak or irresponsible, provocative or far too stupid, not having enough value. Everything is considered their fault, as if everything could have been avoided, and nothing should have happened. This systematic questioning of victims will further increase the risk of suffering extreme violence for the most vulnerable people, such as people with disabilities, in situations of exclusion or marginalization, and all other victims of discrimination. There will be no solidarity with them.
These accusations completely ignore the fact that, in any event, the perpetrator had absolutely no right to commit violence—there is no question. They also reflect the failure to take into account the difference in position between the victim and the aggressor. The victim desperately tries to understand, spontaneously feeling guilty, very painfully feeling the traumatic consequences of the violence which blurs all certainties and self-awareness, makes speech imprecise and generates doubts. Opposite, the aggressor does not seek to understand but to exonerate himself and rationalize his behavior; having committed the violence intentionally and often in a premeditated manner, he does not feel guilty and despises the victim, since he believes in his heart that his position of superiority has given him the privilege of instrumentalizing the victim. In addition, he benefits from the psychotraumatic consequences of the violence he commits, particularly the emotional anesthesia, that of the victim who prevents him from confronting too directly the consequences of his acts, and that of his own that he seeks as such to relieve himself of a tension; this anesthesia allows him not to be affected or anxious by his actions and their consequences, to lie shamelessly and to play quietly and unhindered the character of the innocent, the one who has understood nothing, who has never wanted to do harm, nothing premeditated, nothing controlled, who was the victim of his impulses, anger, jealousy, passion, and even the victim of one who claims to be a victim.
Remember, rape is not linked to testosterone, nor to an irrepressible male desire, it is linked to a desire to use violence that is very effective in destroying the victims. Therefore, rape is used as a weapon of torture, as a weapon of war and as a weapon of destruction in crimes against humanity. If women pay a heavy price for these state crimes, men are targets as well, and as always, children, girls and boys, in significant numbers.
Conclusion
It is imperative that we fight against the culture of rape, demonstrate solidarity with victims and tirelessly inform the public in order to dispel misconceptions and stereotypes. A society that resolutely stands up for victims instead of denying the reality of rapes and their consequences on victims sends a strong signal to aggressors and future aggressors: “You have no right. This is extremely serious. The consequences on rape victims are massive, harrowing and debilitating for a very long time: no one should have to go through this. You must renounce any unlawful privileges, because you are capable of doing so, and we demand it immediately”.
In no way is this about restoring some kind of moral order. It is about the rights of people, asserting that the intimate and private sphere cannot be considered a lawless zone, and that all practices between consenting people are only possible if they uphold the integrity of people and if they fall under the law.
Learn more about rape culture and rape myths
English:
- information brochure published by the association : https://www.memoiretraumatique.org/assets/files/v1/Documents-pdf/brochure_jeunes_anglais_web.pdf
- https://www.memoiretraumatique.org/publications-et-outils/articles-in-english.html
French:
- Le livre noir des violences sexuelles de Muriel SALMONA Paris, Dunod, 2013.et Violences sexuelles. Les 40 questions-réponses incontournables, de Muriel SALMONA Paris, Dunod, 2015.
- http://www.memoiretraumatique.org/assets/files/v1/2016-Necessaire-connaissance-de-limpact-psychotraumatique-chez-les-victimes-de-viols.pdf
- http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1490893-ces-viols-que-les-francais-ne-sauraient-voir-ce-deni-alimente-la-honte-des-victimes.html
- http://www.memoiretraumatique.org/assets/files/v1/Articles-Dr-MSalmona/20170321-lettre_ouverte_viol_en_re%CC%81union.pdf
- La victime c’est la coupable de Muriel Salmona, 2011 : http://www.memoiretraumatique.org/assets/files/v1/Documents-pdf/La_victime_c_est_la_coupable_4_septembre_2011_Muriel_Salmona.pdf
Learn more about violence
- http://www.memoiretraumatique.org
- http://stopaudeni.com/
- http://stopauxviolences.blogspot.fr/
- http://lelivrenoirdesviolencessexuelles.wordpress.com avec une bibliographie générale
- IVSEA (Impact des violences sexuelles de l’enfance à l’âge adulte, 2015 Salmona Laure auteure, Salmona Muriel, UNICEF France (#ENDViolence) (https://stopaudeni.com/rapport and https://www.memoiretraumatique.org/campagnes-et-colloques/2015-campagne-stop-au-deni.html )
- http://www.memoiretraumatique.org/publications-et-outils/articles-de-la-dre-muriel-salmona.html
- information brochures published by the association : https://www.memoiretraumatique.org/assets/files/v1/Documents-pdf/brochure_jeunes_anglais_web.pdf
- http://www.ined.fr/fichier/t_publication/1359/publi_pdf1_pop_soc445.pdf
- http://stop-violences-femmes.gouv.fr/no8-Violences-faites-aux-femmes.html
- https://www.memoiretraumatique.org/campagnes-et-colloques/2016-enquete-ipsos.html
- https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2i6rh7
- http://stop-violences-femmes.gouv.fr/no8-Violences-faites-aux-femmes.html
- And yet it was rape : https://youtu.be/1UVVgHbiOYw
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NEMEROFF, C.B., & DOUGLAS, J., BREMNER, FOA, E. B., MAYBERG, H.S., NORTH, C.S., STEIN, M.B. (2009). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A State-of-the-Science Review Influential Publications, American Psychiatric Association, 7:254-273.
NEWMAN, M. G., CLAYTON, L., ZUELLIG, A., CASHMAN, L., ARNOW, B., DEA, R., et al., The relationship of childhood sexual abuse and depression with somatic symptoms and medical utilization, in Psychological Medicine, Septembre 2000, Vol. 30, Issue 5 p. 1063-1077.
OQUENDO, Maria A., MILLER, Jeffrey M., SUBLETTE, Elizabeth, Neuroanatomical Correlates of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Identifying Biological Substrates for Environmental Effects on Clinical Phenotypes, in The American Journal of Psychiatry, Juin 2013, Vol. 170, Issue 6, p. 574-577.
PERROUD, Nader, PAOLONI-GIACOBINO, Ariane, PRADA, Paco, OLIÉ, Emilie, et al., Increased methylation of glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) in adults with a history of childhood maltreatment: a link with the severity and type of trauma in Translational Psychiatry, Décembre 2011, Vol. 1, Issue 12, e59.
PITMAN, Roger K., SANDERS, Kathy M., ZUSMAN, Randall M., HEALY, Anna R., CHEEMA, Farah, LASKO, Natasha B. et al., Pilot study of secondary prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder with propranolol in Biological Psychiatry, Janvier 2002, Vol. 51, Issue 2, p. 189-192.
PUTNAM, Frank, Ten-Year Research Update Review: Child Sexual Abuse in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Mars 2003, Vol. 42, Issue 3, p 269-278.
RAUCH, S.L., SHIN, L.M., AND PHELPS, E.A. (2006). Neurocircuitry models of posttraumatic stress disorder and extinction: human neuroimaging research–past, present, and future. Biol. Psychiatry 60, 376–382.
RODRIGUEZ, Ned, RYAN, Susan W., VANDE KEMP, Henrika, FOY, David W., « Posttraumatic stress disorder in adult female survivors of child sexual abuse: A comparison study » in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Février 1997, Vol. 65, Issue 1, p. 53-59.
SALMONA, Muriel, La dissociation traumatique et les troubles de la personnalité posttraumatiques : ou comment devient-on étranger à soi-même ? in Les troubles de la personnalité en criminologie et en victimologie, Paris, Dunod, 2013. ; L’impact psychotraumatique de la violence sur les enfants : la mémoire traumatique à l’oeuvre in dossier La protection de l’enfance, La revue de santé scolaire & universitaire, janvier-février 2013, Vol. 4, n°19, p. 21-25. ; Le viol, crime absolu in dossier Le traumatisme du viol, Santé Mentale, Mars 2013, n°176.
SHIN, Lisa M., RAUCH, Scott L., PITMAN, Roger K., Amygdala, Medial Prefrontal Cortex, and Hippocampal Function in PTSD in Annals New York Academy of Sciences, Juillet 2006, Vol. 1071, p. 67-79.
TROCMÉ N., BALA N., False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate, Child abuse and neglect 29, 1333-1345, 2005
WILLIAMS, Linda Meyer, Recall of childhood trauma : a prospective study of women’s memory of child sexual abuse in Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 1994, Vol. 62, n°6, p. 1167-1176.
WIDOM C. S., Accuracy of Adult Recollections of Childhood Victimization : Part 1 ; Childhood Abuse, NCJRS Psychological Assessment Volume:8 Issue:4 Dated:(1996) Pages:412-421
YAFFE, Kristine, VITTINGHOFF, Eric, LINDQUIST, Karla, BARNES, Deborah, COVINSKY, Kenneth E., NEYLAN, Thomas, et al., Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Risk of Dementia Among US Veterans in Archives of General Psychiatry, Juin 2010, Vol. 67, Issue 6, p. 608-613.
YEHUDA, Rachel, LEDOUX, Joseph, Response variation following trauma: a translational neuroscience approach to understanding PTSD in Neuron, Octobre 2007,Vol. 56, Issue 1, p. 19-32.
ZIMMERMAN, Joshua M., MAREN, Stephen, NMDA receptor antagonism in the basolateral but not central amygdala blocks the extinction of Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats in The European Journal of Neuroscience, Mai 2010, Vol. 31, Issue 9, p. 1664-1670.
3. Études, enquêtes, rapports et textes internationaux
Enquête AMTV/Ipsos: Violences sexuelles dans l’enfance, Association Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie/Ipsos, 2019, Rapports téléchargeables sur les sites http://www.memoiretraumatique.org.
Enquête AMTV/Ipsos: Les français-e-s et les représentations du viol et des violences sexuelles , 2016 et 2019 Association Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie, Rapports téléchargeables sur les sites http://www.memoiretraumatique.org.
Enquête CSF, Contexte de la sexualité en France de 2006, Bajos N., Bozon M. et l’équipe CSF., Les violences sexuelles en France : quand la parole se libère, Population & Sociétés, 445, mai 2008.
Enquête CVS Insee-ONDRP, Cadre de vie et sécurité, de l’Observatoire national de la délinquance et des réponses pénales ONDRP– Rapport annuel sur la criminalité en France – 2017.
Enquête IVSEA, Impact des violences sexuelles de l’enfance à l’âge adulte, conduite par Association Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie avec le soutien de l’UNICEF France: Laure Salmona auteure, Muriel Salmona coordinatrice, 2015, Rapport et synthèse téléchargeables sur les sites http://www.memoiretraumatique.org.
Enquête VIRAGE INED, Premiers résultats sur les violences sexuelles, Alice Debauche, Amandine Lebugle, Elizabeth Brown, et al., Documents de travail n° 229, 2017, 67 pages.
Infostats Justice, Violences sexuelles et atteintes aux mœurs : les décisions du parquet et de l’instruction, Bulletin d’information statistique du ministère de la Justice, n° 160, 2018.
Infostats Justice, Les condamnations pour violences sexuelles, Bulletin d’information statistique du ministère de la Justice, n°164, 2018.
REDRESS, Réparation pour viol, Utiliser la jurisprudence internationale relative au viol comme une forme de torture ou d'autres mauvais traitements, 2013., disponible à l’adresse suivante : www.redress.org
CIDE Convention Internationale des Droits de l’enfant, 1989 : https://www.unicef.fr/dossier/convention-internationale-des-droits-de-lenfant
Convention du Conseil de l’Europe sur la prévention et la lutte contre la violence à l’égard des femmes et la violence domestique dite Convention d’Istanbul ratifiée par la France et entrée en vigueur le 1er août 2014, texte téléchargeable sur le site du Conseil de l’Europe : http://www.coe
Enquête CSF Contexte de la sexualité en France de 2006, Bajos N., Bozon M. et l’équipe CSF., Les violences sexuelles en France : quand la parole se libère, Population & Sociétés (Bulletin mensuel d’information de l’Institut national d’études démographiques), 445, mai 2008. http://www.ined.fr/fichier/t_publication/1359/publi_pdf1_pop_soc445.pdf
Enquête CSVF sur les comportements sexistes et les violences envers les filles, Observatoire des violences envers les femmes du conseil général de la Seine-Saint- Denis, 2007.
Enquête IVSEA Impact des violences sexuelles de l’enfance à l’âge adulte, 2015, Association Mémoire Traumatique et Victimologie SALMONA Laure auteure, SALMONA Muriel coordinatrice, Rapport et synthèse téléchargeables sur les sites : http://stopaudeni.com et http://www.memoiretraumatique.org
Enquête VSFT-93 Enquête en Seine-Saint-Denis sur les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes au travail, THOMASSIN, Claire, AMOUSSOU, Gisèle, DOMINGUEZ, Patricia, FOUGEYROLLAS, Dominique, GILLET, Anne, LE CLERC, Sylviane, et al., « Enquête en Seine-Saint-Denis sur les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes au travail (Enquête VSFT-93) » in Travailler, 2009, Vol. 2, n°22, p. 59-77
ENVEFF Enquête nationale sur les violences envers les femmes en France Jaspard M, Brown E, Condon S, Fougeyrollas-Schwebel D, Houel A, Lhomond B, Maillochon F, Saurel-Cubizolles M, and Schiltz M. (2003). Les violences envers les femmes en France: une enquête nationale.Paris, La Documentation Française, Rapport national ENVEFF, juillet 2000, disponible sur http://www.eurowrc.org/01.eurowrc/06.eurowrc_fr/france/13france_ewrc.htm
Collectif Féministe Contre le Viol, Statistiques générales de la permanence téléphonique du N°Vert Viol-Femmes-Informations, Paris, CFCV, 2006-2007, 2011.
ONDRP Observatoire national de la délinquance et des réponses pénales, La criminalité en France, Rapport 2012, ONDRP, 2012.
Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale, Crise économique, marché du travail et pauvreté, Rapport 2011-2012, ONPES, 2012.
Observatoire national des violences faites aux femmes, La lettre de l’Observatoire national des violences faites aux femmes, « Les violences au sein du couple et violences sexuelles : les principales données », n°4, Novembre 2014.
OMS, World Health Organization, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, Genève, WHO, 2013.
OMS World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Violence Prevention, Genève, WHO, 2014.
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. SNYDER, Howard N., Sexual Assault Of Young Children As Reported To Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, And Offender Characteristics, Juillet 2000, National Center for Juvenile Justice, U.S.
United Nations Children’s Fund, Hidden in plain sight: A statistical analysis of violence against children, New York, UNICEF, 2014.
Rapport du Conseil économique social et environnemental CESE : VION, Pascale, Combattre toutes les violences faites aux femmes, des plus visibles aux plus insidieuses,, Les éditions des Journaux officiels, novembre 2014.
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